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The movie files are compressed by mpeg1 and mpeg2 (sample movies: #1 and #2). You can download either of them freely for the purpose of academic and personal use. Please don't hesitate to send us any questions and comments.
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 Home-made left-right reversing goggles we used in the experiment. |
 Subject a few days after wearing left-right reversing goggles. |
 Subject a few days after wearing left-right reversing goggles. He can not walk straight. |
 Subject after adaptation to left-right reversing goggles. He can ride a bicycle wearing goggles. |
About this experiment and movies
We perceive a lot of objects in the external world mainly through visual, tactile and auditory sense organs, and operate them properly using our body, especially our hands. This kind of sensori-motor cooridination is almost automatic in daily life and we are not conscious of its existence. However, once we put on prisms and lenses which optically transform our vision, this harmony is destroyed (See Fig. 2).
Thus, investigation of the process of adaptation to optically transformed vision gives us a lot of suggestions about psychological and physiological information processing of our brain: how we perceive the external world, what reference frames we use for cognition of space, how we operate objects properly using our hands, the plasticity of our brain to environmental changes and so on.
With the consent of all the experimenters and the subjects, we here present the movie files of the experiment in which four subjects (2 males and 2 females, university students) wore left-right reversing goggles for 35 or 39 days except during sleeping. This experiment was conducted from August to September in 1998. Two of them wore goggles for 35 days; the other two for 39 days. Twenty-seven experiments (psychological experiments and fMRI experiments) were conducted before, during, and after the period. The detail of the experimental procedures are described in "Adaptation to left-right reversed vision rapidly activates ipsilateral visual cortex in humans" (Miyauchi S, Egusa H, Amagase M, Sekiyama K, Imaruoka T, Tashiro T, Journal of Physiology Paris 98: 207-219, 2004). Subjects' behaviors in these experiments and in their daily life were recorded onto video tape. By watching them, you can see that the subjects were perplexed after wearing left-right reversing goggles vision, struggled, adapted gradually, and finally enjoyed them.
The purposes of the release are as follows:
- Not only for subjects, but also for experimenters, it is difficult to conduct an experiment in which subjects wear left-right reversing goggles for more than five weeks. So the movie files themselves are valuable documentaries.
- We want to share these movie files with researchers in a variety of research fields who are interested in the underlying brain mechanisms of visuomotor coordination, integration of multisensory information processing, the plasticity of human brain and so on. In other words, though a part of the results of the experiments were published, we rather want to show you adaptive changes to the optically transformed vision not only from the experimental data, but also from actual behaviors of the subjects' daily life during the experiment.
- We believe that the sharing of the movie files among researchers would contribute the understanding of the issues described in the first paragraph and would be of benefit to the progress of human communication technology and the treatment of behavioral/cognitive impairments.
Related articles
- Body image as a visuomotor transformation device revealed in adaptation
to reversed vision. Sekiyama K, Miyauchi S, Imaruoka T, Egusa H, Tashiro T, Nature 407: 374-377 (2000)
article link - Modification of depth and distance perception caused by long-term wearing of left-right reversing spectacles. Ichikawa M, Kimura T, Egusa H, Nakatsuka M, Amano J, Ueda T, Tashiro T, Perception 32: 131-153 (2003)
article link - Adaptation to left-right reversed vision rapidly activates ipsilateral visual cortex in humans. Miyauchi S, Egusa H, Amagase M, Sekiyama K, Imaruoka T, Tashiro T, Journal of Physiology Paris 98: 207-219 (2004)
article link
Fig. 1 What are left-right reversing goggles?
When you put on the goggles, a pair of right angle prisms are located in front of your eyeballs. Light deflects and reflects in the prism shown as the above. Consequently, your retinal image symmetrically reverses about the vertical meridian of the visual field.
Fig. 2 What happens when we put on left-right reversing goggles?
The photograph on the left is an image of the real external world. The right is what you would see through left-right reversing goggles. Suppose that you are sitting in front of a CRT screen, holding a mouse with your right hand, and typing with your left hand. A coffee cup is just behind your right hand.
When you put on left-right reversing goggles, it looks like you are holding the mouse with your left hand, typing with your right hand, and the coffee cup is just behind your left hand. So, when you reach with your apparent left hand to pick up the coffee cup, you will see that your apparent right, but actual left hand moves in an unexpected direction, and you can not get the coffee cup before adaptation.
In short, left-right reversing goggles cause dissociation between visual and proprioceptive input.
Fig. 3 The ability to adapt to optically transformed vision
The ability to adapt to optically transformed vision generally depends on the phylogenetic order. Thus, the ability to adapt may relate to some higher brain functions and plasticity specific to primates.